(Melbourne) Former Australian champion Greg Norman, who became LIV boss, said on Wednesday that the world rankings would become “laughable” if his officials refused to award points to golfers who joined his dissident circuit, heavily financed by Saudi Arabia saudi.
Posted at 9:25 a.m.
“It will make the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) obsolete if they don’t agree” to award points to LIV participants, Norman told The Age, an Australian newspaper.
“If they wake up at the end of the year and Dustin Johnson (a famous American golfer who joined LIV) is 102e world, don’t you think that would be laughable for them? “, he added.
According to the 67-year-old former Australian glory, the leaders of the PGA Tour “have two ways of proceeding: they can fall back (on themselves, editor’s note) or they can integrate the LIV into the world rankings. We will move forward. »
The world of usually civilized golf has been torn apart for months around the creation of this dissident circuit financed by Saudi Arabia, which has joined several stars of the PGA circuit including Dustin Johnson but also Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka , Henrik Stenson, Patrick Reed or, more recently, one of the rising stars, the Australian Cameron Smith, world number two at the time of his announcement.
To attract as many high-level players as possible into its nets, the LIV-LIV corresponding to the Roman numeral 54 – the sum of three 18-hole courses, the format of the tournaments – has set up endowments of 25 million dollars per event (eight in total for this year).
In reaction to this project, the PGA Tour, the historic circuit of North American professional golf, announced last month to put more rewards at stake. He also decided to exclude players taking part in LIV tournaments, a decision challenged in American justice by several players and the LIV.
In his interview, Greg Norman also urges the organizers of the four Majors of the professional circuit (British Open, Masters, US Open and USPGA) not to follow the measure taken by those responsible for the PGA Tour.
The latter “have no right to tell these Majors what to do. These are independent (tournaments), ”he argued.